POCO’s latest budget flagship comes with a redesigned back and a Snapdragon processor. We’ve already posted our practice with the POCO M3, reviewing the design and specs. The Xiaomi Poco M3 Price in Nigeria is NGN49,166, Xiaomi Poco M3 comes with Android 10, 6.53-inch IPS LCD, 400-nit screen, Qualcomm SM6115 Snapdragon 662 chipset (11 nm), 48 MP + 2 MP + 2 MP triple rear camera and 8 MP selfie camera, 4 GB RAM and 64 GB / 128 GB ROM. But today, let’s take a closer look at the POCO M3 and see if it lives up to our expectations as a budget smartphone.
POCO M3 Review: Design and Display
First, let’s take a look at your design. Compared to most budget phones, the M3’s design certainly deserves the word “VALUE FOR MONEY” and boasts excellent build quality. We have seen many inexpensive models that are very similar. But the M3’s rear design is much more unique and recognizable. While the back isn’t shiny or metallic, it doesn’t feel cheap. The finish of the textured leather cover is a nice touch, making the phone stand out from the boring designs of budget models at first glance.
And the camera module is placed on the left side of the inlaid glass at the top. For visual balance, the Poco logo is displayed on the other side. The model we have in hand is the black version. Thanks to the one-piece cover on the back and frame, the sleek black look gives a sense of unity.
When you turn the phone over, the front reminds us of your budget location, with a 1080P water drop LCD display. Of course, the screen is not really sharp, but we do not complain about an affordable phone.
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The consolation is that the screen-to-body ratio is well controlled without leaving an unpleasant chin. At first, we were a little concerned about the quality of the screen, but the moment we turned on the phone, the good color reproduction restored our confidence in the M3.
POCO M3 Hardware And Specifications Reviews
In this price segment, hardware compromises are common due to cost reduction. While the Snapdragon 662 SOC in the Poco M3 is not a powerful performance option, users can still have a full and smooth experience with the global version of the Xiaomi Mi UI 12 operating system. The Snapdragon 662 is a chipset Updated from Snapdragon 660 and optimized for better camera performance.
According to the results of the comparative tests on Geekbench 5 and Antutu, the CPU performance of the Poco M3 is almost equal to that of some models with the Snapdragon 665. So we can at least say that the software optimization of this chipset is fairly good. Another remarkable detail is the multi-core performance, which is relatively impressive compared to the single-core performance.
Given this chipset, we were curious whether the phone could run popular games like PubG Mobile smoothly. When PubG is running, the game does not allow players to activate HD or higher graphics on this phone; it can only run on a medium frame rate option with balanced graphics. But the frame rate can increase with smooth graphics settings. We exceeded the frame limit on the PUBG China version at 60fps with a third party tool to access the highest performance. While the performance is not entirely smooth in the low-balanced graphics mode, we could still get a good gaming experience with an average frame rate of 50.22 fps. When we switched to smooth graphics, the M3 was able to run the above 50fps smoothly with less jitter. And surprisingly, the average frame rate of 58.19 is better than we previously expected.
POCO M3 Camera Quality Review
And now, let’s take a look at the performance of your camera. Probably to keep costs down, the ultra-wide angle lens was sacrificed for a higher quality 48MP primary lens. While somewhat of a compromise in some ways, we prefer a more practical camera module driven by the main camera, better than a relatively useless, poor quality wide-angle camera in the face of experience.
The other two cameras, the macro lens, and the field lens’s portrait depth, complete the phone’s camera setup.
Of these three cameras, the main camera is the one that gave us the biggest surprise. From the samples taken with the main camera, we can see that the images showed decent colors with good dynamic range under good lighting conditions. And the 48MP native resolution allowed the main camera to capture high-resolution photos with rich detail, and even for normal modes, most samples had good clarity, too.
But due to the lack of OIS anti-shake, users should be careful to hold the phone firmly when taking photos in low light. Another problem is that the lighting strategy is sometimes too aggressive in some complicated scenes, leading to a loss of detail due to extreme brightness in the corners.
The main camera offers stable performance most of the time when taking good night photos with its handy night mode. Most of the night shots showed good control with a balanced exposure.
But when we went into extremely dark scenes, the downsides of this sensor came to light. For example, to provide more detail in extremely dark conditions, the lighting is so aggressive that the entire image became much louder.
But overall, we admire Poco’s efforts to optimize the camera software, as it has already shown much more potential than we expected from the hardware.
When it comes to the macro lens and the portrait camera, their performance isn’t as impressive as the main camera, although they made a macro and portrait shots much easier. The macro samples were in close focus and had good color reproduction but were not clear enough. In portrait mode, the phone allows users to edit the original photo with the focus and aperture re-selected. But from the samples, we found that the edge detection was not accurate, especially when looking closely at the samples.
POCO M3 Battery Review
The M3’s 6000 mAh battery far exceeded our expectations for an affordable device. To check the battery life in daily use, we run a power consumption test to simulate our daily use.
In one hour of PUBG play, it consumes 14% of the energy. Another 12% power reduction after one hour of camera use, 6% after one hour of social media use, and another 6% battery drop after one hour of video playback. After the test, 62% of the power remained.
The Poco M3 comes with 18W charging efficiency, which is not a remarkable fast charging solution for an Android phone. It took us over 2 hours to fully charge the phone, which doesn’t really match the super large battery capacity. But since the latest iPhone also uses an 18W fast charging solution, we will not complain about this affordable model.
Xiaomi Poco M3 Price and Availability
The Xiaomi Poco M3 price starts at $ 149 in the US and the world market, and in Nigeria, the Xiaomi Poco M3 price is N49,000 in Nigerian currency. The availability status of the Poco M3 in Nigeria has yet to be confirmed. Xiaomi will release the Poco M3 online on Black Friday, November 27, with US starting prices starting at $ 129 for the 64GB model and $ 149 for 128GB. The regular price is $ 149 for 64GB and $ 169 for 128GB.
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Full specifications of Xiaomi Poco M3
LAUNCHING
- Announced: Nov 24, 2020
- Status: Available since November 24, 2020
BODY
- Dimensions: 162.3 x 77.3 x 9.6 mm
- Weight: 198 grams
- Build a glass front (Gorilla Glass 3), plastic frame, plastic back
- Colors Poco Yellow, Power Black, Cool Blue
- Dual SIM SIM (Nano-SIM, dual standby)
SCREEN
- IPS LCD type, 400 nits (typical)
- Size 6.53 inches (~ 83.4% screen-to-body ratio)
- 1080 x 2340 pixels, 19.5: 9 ratio (~ 395 PPI density)
- Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection
NETWORK
- LTE / HSPA / GSM technology
- HSPA speed 42.2 / 5.76 Mbps, LTE-A
- 4G Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 20, 28, 38, 40, 41
- 3G HSDPA 850/900/1700 (AWS) / 1900/2100 bands
- 2G GSM 850/900/1800/1900 bands – SIM 1 and SIM 2
MEMORY
- RAM 4 GB
- ROM 64 GB / 128 GB
- Card slot Yes, via micro SD card (uses a special slot)
PLATFORM
- Operating system Android 10, MIUI 12
- Qualcomm SM6115 Snapdragon 662 chipset (11 nm)
- Eight-core CPU (4 × 2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold and 4 × 1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver)
- GPU Adreno 610
REAL CAMERA
- Triple 48 MP, f / 1.8, (wide), PDAF
- 2 MP, f / 2.4, (macro)
- 2 MP, f / 2.4, (depth)
- It has an LED flash, panorama, HDR.
- 1080p video at 30 fps
SELFIE CAMERA
- Single 8 megapixel, f / 2.1, (wide)
- Panorama functions
- 1080p video at 30 fps
BATTERY
- Non-removable type
- 6000 mAh Li-Po capacity
- Fast charging Yes, 18 W.
SOUND
- Loudspeaker Yes, with two loudspeakers
- 3.5mm jack Yes
- 24-bit / 192 kHz audio
CONNECTIVITY
- WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac, dual-band, access point, Wi-Fi Direct
- NFC no
- FM Radio Yes
- Infrared port Yes
- USB USB Type-C 2.0, USB on the go
- GPS Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
- Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE
PRICE About USD 149
POCO M3 review: Verdict
After all the tests we have done on the Poco M3, we can certainly recommend this phone in its price segment. While the phone cannot be praised for its performance and charging, some features like its excellent build quality, good camera performance, and long battery life set it apart from boring budget phones.
Note: – We cannot guarantee that the information on this device is 100% ACCURATE; For example, the device’s price can change over time. However, we do our best to provide you with 99% accurate information about this device.
